Network problems affecting Zambia's largest mobile phone operator Airtel have continued and have resulted in a warning of possible sanctions from the country's telecom sector regulator, the Zambia Information and Communication Technology Authority (ZICTA).

The Company said over the last few days it has experienced difficulties with its network coverage, which culminated in the collapse of its network on Friday last week. Subscribers could not make calls or access data services.

In June this year, Airtel Zambia's network collapsed resulting in 28, 000 Airtel customers losing airtime balances valued at more than $178, 000.

The impact on Quality of Service (QoS) has made communication difficult, negatively affected trade and resulted in a public outcry. This has forced ZICTA to warn the operator of serious sanctions.

Last year, the regulator dragged Airtel and other operators to court over poor services, claiming that the alleged poor services were 'criminal in nature.'

Airtel director for corporate communications and government relations Joseph Kafwariman said, "We would like to apologise to subscribers for the poor service. This is because the company experienced a system hardware fault that led to core switches overloading and hanging."

He continued that this problem had resulted in the network outage that affected subscribers, but that it was restored before midnight the same day.

Kafwariman added that all the affected subscribers have been compensated with airtime and data that was lost because of the outage.